Kinsley resident reflects on life as 100^th birthday approaches

By David Myers

Southwest Kansas Register

On Jan. 4, 1908, President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt was in office; Henry Ford was yet to develop the first Model T; the Titanic was four years away from its maiden voyage; and in a small Kansas village, Ruth Gleason was born.

“My first car was a ’25 Ford,” Gleason said from her Kinsley home.

A few weeks short of her 100th birthday, Gleason is sharp, quick-witted, and loves to let out a good belly laugh.

While the ’25 Ford is long gone, Gleason still drives around town -- down to the bank or to the senior center for a spirited game of pinochle.

“I grew up playing pinochle,” she said. “I played two-handed with my grandfather and three-handed with my dad and brother. Now we play six-handed: two decks, 20 cards. Oh, I like pinochle.”

On Dec. 29 from 2-4 p.m., family and friends will gather at St. Nicholas School Auditorium to celebrate Gleason’s 100th birthday. Those who are unable to attend may send cards to: Ruth Gleason, c/o SKR, P.O. Box 137, Dodge City, KS 67801. Cards will be forwarded to Gleason.

Gleason was born in Purcell to Kate Olberding and Michael Schlick. The family soon moved to Iola where she was reared with her younger brother, Carl, until the death of their mother when Gleason was 15.

“We played ball; we built little racers out of broom-stick handles and we’d race them down our driveway,” she said. “We had a sand pile. We had a swing and a trapeze. With all the neighbor children, we always had a lot of kids around.

“After my mother died, my dad would send my brother and me each summer to Iowa to his parents because he was busy working and didn’t want us running around town.”

In 1927 Gleason graduated from the former Iola Junior College with a teaching degree. For two years, she taught school in Hodgeman County where, on a blind date, she met a young man named Leo Gleason.

“We’d drive around the countryside to Point of Rocks, things like that,” she said, describing the dates the two shared over the months to follow.

The couple was married Oct. 16, 1929 and lived on the Gleason family farm north of St. Mary where they had five children: Michael Leo, Mary Katherine Schawe, Patricia Schartz, Louise Landry, and Eugene. Gleason also has 23 grandchildren, 52 great-grandchildren, and four great-great grandchildren.

“He was different,” a smiling Gleason said of her husband. “We got along real good. He died in ’57. That’s 50 years now. He died in March, and he would have been 50 in June. His birthday was on Flag Day. He said they always hung out the flag on his birthday.”

Leo died in his sleep of heart failure following the blizzard of ’57, after a day of clearing piles of snow that had covered their livestock. The same ailment would take their son, Michael, in 1993. Gleason said she never considered re-marrying, or even dating: “I had five kids to tend to!” she said, smiling.

A century of life reflects unimaginable change – from war to weather to technology. When asked how she was affected by the Second World War, Gleason responded, “I can even remember World War I! I was going to a boarding school for girls. One weekend my folks came up and we went to the park, and they had trenches dug in the park for the home guard. So, we ran down the trenches!

“I remember when the Japanese bombed Hawaii,” she added. “We had a teacher boarding with us. She had a radio and she came down and said they had bombed Hawaii. That was getting pretty close.”

The Dust Bowl days provided a memorable struggle for her family: “We had rags stuffed all around the windows and door jams. We wouldn’t set the table until we were ready to eat because it would get so dusty. It was terrible.”

As for the explosion in new technology -- from the newest cell phones to the Internet -- she thinks it’s moving a bit fast. What Gleason believes has changed for the better is the behavior of young people -- and when describing the behavior of certain youth from days gone by, it’s easy to understand why.

“Kids don’t seem so wild now,” she said. “My kids went to Spearville [to school]. Halloween night in Spearville was terrible. One time some kids put a cow from the wheat pasture in one of the restrooms in the school house. That was a mess! They put a cow in the bandstand! Oh, they just did everything! That poor marshal was at wit’s end trying to keep up with them! Michael would go in the next morning to school and he couldn’t get down Main Street; there were all kinds of implements on the street. They did it up real good!”

When asked the secret to her longevity, she good naturedly put up a hand as if to wave off the question and laughed: “When I was a kid going to school I think I had everything: diphtheria, typhoid fever, measles, mumps, and chicken pox. I guess I got rid of all of it.”

Today, except for Mary Schawe who lives in Colorado Springs, most her family live a short distance away. Gleason enjoys a good puzzle, making detailed quilts as graduation presents for her grandchildren and as gifts for others (including one quilt which recently sold for more than $700), and a good game of pinochle.

“I’m well satisfied,” she said of her life. “I don’t know what I’d want different.”